Kimi o omou hima naki yado to omoedomo koyoi no ame wa moranu ma zo naki

English Translation

I had thought this house
had no gap in it, so full
was it of my thoughts
of you — yet tonight's rain finds
no part of it that holds dry

Meaning

I had thought this house had no gap left in it, so full was it of thinking of you. Yet tonight's rain finds no part of it that stays dry.

Commentary

67 A House Without a Gap

The same Toshiko was waiting for Chikane on a rainy night, and the rain, it seems, kept him away. Her house was a poor one and leaked badly, and when he sent word that the rain prevented his coming and asked how she was faring in such a place, she composed this poem. The prose says no more, and the section consists of this single poem.
Toshiko was Chikane's wife and composes a poem of waiting for him in the sixty-sixth section as well. Chikane held a post in the Right Horse Bureau.
The setting is her house on a night of rain, a poor house that leaked badly, as the prose says.
What prompted the poem was his question about how she was faring there.
The section ends with the poem; no response and no later event is recorded.

The word in the second line means a gap or chink. She begins by calling it a house with no gap in it, so full of her thoughts of him.
The concessive turns on that: so she had thought. A house supposedly full turns out to be full of holes.
What follows is a double negative: there is no part that does not leak, with an emphatic particle governing the phrase.
The verb for leaking is used of rain and of tears alike. She appears to be describing a bad roof, and is saying that there is no hour when her weeping stops. The plain fact of a poor house is taken up whole as the material of the poem.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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